Quantum Leaps (and A Cloud Of Dust)

Football today is a high-tech, specialized game. Of course, it wasn`t always that way. Like most sports it has evolved over the decades.

On these pages we take a look at the evolutionary process of the sport, as well just fun and interesting facts from the game`s history. Included are items that even the most avid fan may not know.

Did you know that until 1962 it was legal to grab a ball carrier`s face mask? Or that the first professional football team in Miami wasn`t the Dolphins?

TO BE A KNOWLEDGEABLE FAN, JUST FOLLOW THE BOUNCING PROLATE SPHEROID

The football is a prolate spheroid. It is not a pigskin.

The common misnomer may be traceable more than 100 years ago to the kickballs Amos Alonzo Stagg created as a teen-ager by inflating the bladders of hogs butchered by his father. The bladder in the modern football is synthetic rubber encased in leather steerhide. Cowhide has been used, and briefly a rubber-covered ball, but never pigskin.

Prolate spheroid is the official designation of the odd, elliptical shape. The word prolate, derived from the Latin prolatus, means stretched out or elongated. Just as American football was derived from rugby, the ball is an elongated rugby ball. Australian and Canadian football are the other games played with prolate spheroids.

The football become more prolate as the game changed to emphasize the forward pass. Between 1912 and 1934 the dimensions of the ball were altered five times, which decreased the girth and yielded a more aerodynamic ball. The pro ball has remained constant since then, with a length of 11-11 1/4 inches, circumference of 21 1/4-21 1/2 inches at the middle and inflation pressure of 12 1/2-13 1/2 pounds. The NCAA ball varies slightly.

Agreeing on the size and shape was one thing. Getting the ball to retain those dimensions was a problem that plagued the sport well into this century. The ball often lost its shape from the pounding it took during a game. Ernie Nevers once punted a ball and had it explode on contact. The addition of the inner lining in 1925 helped solve the problem.

The NFL requires that the home team supply 24 balls for each game. They must be delivered to the officials` dressing room one hour before gametime so the referee can verify their authenticity.

In the interest of making the ball easier to see during night games, the NFL experimented briefly with an all-white ball, then in 1956 settled on painting two white stripes around the standard brown one. That made it easier on the eyes, but harder on the quarterbacks, because the paint made the ball slippery.

In his autobiography, former NFL referee John McDonough wrote that John Brodie of the 49ers used a knife to scrape off the stripe on the panel where he placed his thumb when he gripped the ball. That elim-

inated the slipping problem and prompted the league to have the balls manufactured with that panel blank.

A new problem arose when left-handers Ken Stabler and Bobby Douglass entered the league. So balls marked with an ``L`` were produced minus the stripe in the panel where they gripped the ball. Eventually the night ball became ambidextrous when it was modified to leave a thumb space on all four sides.

Improvements in stadium lighting eliminated the need for a night ball, and in 1976 the NFL scrapped the striped ball. However, inadequate lighting continues to be a problem in many high school and some college stadiums. So last year a school in Orlando experimented with footballs painted with fluorescent yellow stripes. The glow-in-the-dark balls were designed by Charles O. Finley, the former Oakland Athletics owner who once tried to sell the

major leagues on orange baseballs.

AND THEN IT CAME TO PASS

The major rule change that transformed football from a plodding cousin of rugby to the wide-open game of today was the legalization of the forward pass in 1906. But football came to pass not out of a desire to inject excitement into the game, but rather in the interest of reducing violence.

In 1905, 18 deaths and 159 serious injuries were reported in football. Public pressure prompted threats by President Theodore

Roosevelt to abolish the game. The NCAA was organized by a group of reformers intent on ending the deaths and brutal injuries. Their first key act was the forward pass rule. At the same time they outlawed the flying wedge.

Eddie Wood, an end with the Canton Bulldogs, is credited with catching the first pass in a pro game, in 1906.

TO TOP IT OFF... THE HELMET

Gerald Ford didn`t wear one. Pop Warner thought it was unnecessary.

The helmet, now perhaps the most important item of football gear, was the last to gain acceptance. Headgear wasn`t required in college football until 1939 or in the NFL until 1943.

Ford, the center who became president, played sans helmet for Michigan in 1932-34. Warner, coach and innovator, said in 1912, ``Playing without helmets gives players more confidence, saves their heads from hard jolts, and keeps their ears from becoming torn or sore.``